The Jug and the Face

About This Talk

Chapter 4 asks who owns the payment rather than what it costs: the fetus assessment goes to the husband and reverts to the woman if he has died or if she was freed or converted after conception; a stranger who injures a married woman pays her lost wages and medical costs to her husband and splits damage and shame by whether the wound shows, one third to her and two thirds to him when visible and the reverse when concealed, while a husband who injures his wife pays her the entire sum outright with no rights to its income; a capital act cancels the money entirely, so a blow that kills, drawing blood from a parent, or injuring on Shabbat carry no payment, with Yom Kippur the stated exception; and a minor, deaf mute or incompetent person who injures never owes anything even after gaining capacity, while a servant or married woman who injures is competent and merely pays later. Chapter 5 turns to the prohibition itself, forbidding injury to anyone including oneself by a kal vachomer from the limit on a convict's lashes, calling a man who merely raises his hand wicked, ordering lashes where the blow is worth less than a prutah, granting the injured party an oath where witnesses saw him enter whole and leave injured, limiting a confession to the three assessments that are debts rather than penalties and explaining that the court admission is itself what creates the embarrassment, and then ruling that payment gives atonement for property but never for a body until the injured man is asked for forgiveness, which he is forbidden to withhold; it closes on consent, where a man may waive his jug but not his eye, and where an order to break a third party's utensil leaves the one who swings fully liable and the one who ordered it merely wicked. Chapter 6 governs property damage, imposing full liability even for accident and force beyond control but only on the owner's premises, exempting unintentional damage in one's own domain or a third party's, excusing a sound ladder rung that rotted as an act of God, permitting the courtyard owner to come and go in his ordinary manner among jugs he never undertook to watch, and then machining the public street: the beam carrier who halts to rest without calling out is liable while one who halts to shift his load is not, the runner pays except after sunset on Friday and not at all if both were running, a man's force is his own hand until it comes to rest and then becomes a cistern, and liability divides six ways on a dead donkey, onto the last man who sat on the chair, and into three separate columns among a man, an ox and the owner of a pit.